Carbon Crunch Future Program Announcement

Description

The purpose of this Special Notice (SN) is to provide public notification of additional research areas of interest to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Tactical Technology Office (TTO), specifically for the contemplated forthcoming Carbon Crunch program. If released, the Carbon Crunch Program Solicitation (PS) will be made available at https://sam.gov/. Additionally, a Proposers Day is planned for early February 2026 in Arlington, VA (SN also to be made available at https://sam.gov/). Carbon Crunch aims to accelerate Carbon-Carbon (C-C) hypersonic aeroshell production by developing and applying cutting edge composite manufacturing methods that are inherently faster and more scalable. Performers will be asked to demonstrate an end-to-end manufacturing process (pre-form layup to near-net-shape densification) that demonstrates high quality, rapid production, and quick design-cycle turnaround. Once the process has demonstrated improved throughput at a reasonable cost hypersonic program of record at a production rate of 100 all-up-rounds (AURs) per month, the technology can be transitioned to programs of record in the future. By targeting the most constraining production bottlenecks, Carbon Crunch will enable scalable, fast, and agile production of hypersonic aeroshells.